It's a sad, painful time in Yemen. On the evening of Dec. 5, the day following the attack on the Al-Arida Hospital at Yemen's Defense Ministry that left 56 dead and more than 150 injured, I had dinner with a senior military official. A phone call he took involved the strangest discussion I have ever heard.

Speaking with the father of one of the victims of the previous day's massacre, the official insisted that the man’s daughter could not be buried in Martyrs' Cemetery, where male victims were being interred. That evening was the first time I realized that Martyrs’ Cemetery did not contain a single woman's grave, despite there having been dozens of female martyrs in Yemen over the years.

In Yemen, especially in the cities, women are not only marginalized in public life, but even after their death they are not given a grave that befits their memory and the sacrifices they made for this country.

Women in Yemen are usually the ones who give the most, yet they receive the least recognition. While women sometimes outperform men in countries where the sexes are afforded equal opportunities in education and employment, for this to occur in Yemen — a male-dominated country — is very unusual.